Re: PC vs Mac

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006 17:12:10 +0900, Paul D wrote:

If I were
to offer a word of advice, I would provide the following. PCs should
become
more resistant to bullying and provide a more stable and secure
environment. Macs should be less anti-social and adopt a better
standards-based open architecture approach to attract application
developers and provide greater range and capability with their software.

Hitting the nail on the head, that's it.

Macs are anti-social and less standards based than Windows? That must
be the joke of the day. :)

The Mac runs an open-source kernel (Darwin/BSD), uses an open-source
browser (Safari/KHTML), uses and includes the open source compiler G++,
gives its development tools for free, provides Unix-compatible
environments like X-windows, uses standard PDF for printing and
document rendering, uses the Unicode standard system-wide for fonts and
text, uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, shares calendar
information with the iCal standard, and rips your CDs to either
ubiquitous MP3 or the open standard AAC. Apple computers network via a
variety of open standards as well as the closed Windows SMB protocol
(which had to be reverse-engineered). Apple made widespread the use of
the USB, Firewire, 802.11, and Bluetooth standards before they were
common on PCs.

Windows, in comparison, runs a closed kernel with no Linux/unix
compatibility; provides a closed web browser with broken web standards
support; charges for its development tools; has proprietary formats for
printing and video rendering; uses a mish-mash of Unicode and other
text encoding schemes (even its main text editoir can't open Unicode
files); shares calendar information in its closed Outlook format; uses
proprietary networking protocols; and rips your music to WMA.

Hm, that looks suspiciously like a rant, although it wasn't meant to be.

No problem. You're reinforcing the point I made that the Mac has a more
elegant, secure, and stable operating environment. The problem is
developers don't like working with Apple. Very often, it's the little
things where you see Apple's parochialism. For example, one of the things
that used to annoy me was the one button Apple mouse. It just boggled the
mind that Apple that inroduced the mouse with the Lisa would be so
recalcitrant when it came to adding a right click and a scroll capability.
Well, they finally gave in but this is one area where Apple should never
have put themselves in the position where they had to play catch-up to the
PC.

Phil Yff
.